Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is originated, written, coordinated, and edited since 1995 by Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell. The APOD archive contains the largest collection of annotated astronomical images on the internet.
SciTron Research APOD image for February 14, 2026
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Previous APOD images that feature Ground Observatories
March 10, 2026 – Paranal – Home of the VLT
ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) is a flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy. It is one of the world’s most advanced optical telescopes, consisting of four Unit Telescopes with main mirrors of 8.2m diameter and four movable 1.8m diameter Auxiliary Telescopes. The telescopes can work together, to form a giant ‘interferometer’, the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer, allowing astronomers to pick up much finer details of the cosmos than would be possible with the ATs or the UTs alone.
The 8.2m diameter Unit Telescopes can also be used individually. With one such telescope, images of celestial objects as faint as magnitude 30 can be obtained in a one-hour exposure. This corresponds to seeing objects that are four billion (four thousand million) times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye.
The large telescopes are named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun.
June 4, 2025 – Rubin
Rubin Observatory is privileged to operate and conduct research on Cerro Pachón in Chile. Chile’s dry air and dark skies make it one of the greatest places on Earth for everything from casual stargazing to studying light from space to try and answer some of our biggest questions about the Universe.
Cerro Pachón was selected as the site for Rubin Observatory because it’s an excellent place to conduct high-quality astronomical and astrophysical science (you can read more about that on our site selection page). AURA, the organization that manages Rubin for the National Science Foundation, has operated astronomical facilities in Chile since the early 1960s, and has historically reserved 10% of the observing time at these facilities for Chilean scientists. Because Rubin Observatory is a survey telescope, which means that there isn’t a specific scientist observing at any given time, scientists at Chilean institutions will have privileged access to Rubin Observatory data from the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).
November 19, 2024 – Las Campanas
Carnegie astronomers had long wanted an observing station in the Southern Hemisphere that would give them access to the Magellanic Clouds and the center of the Milky Way. The Las Campanas Observatory, located at a superb site high in the southern reaches of Chile’s Atacama Desert, was established in 1969 to be home to both 40-inch and 100-inch reflecting telescopes. The newest additions here, twin 6.5-meter reflectors, are remarkable members of the latest generation of giant telescopes. The future of Las Campanas Observatory will be marked by the construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). The GMT is a next-generation, extremely large telescope that, with seven segmented mirrors, will be 80 feet, or 24.5 meters, in diameter. The project is being developed by an international consortium of universities and research institutions.
July 18, 2023 – La Palma
At the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM), on the rim of the Caldera de Taburiente National Park, at 2396 metres above sea level in the municipality of Garafía, La Palma, stands one of the largest arrays of telescopes in the world.
Because of the sky above La Palma, this observatory enjoys exceptional conditions for astronomical research, for this reason, it continues to attract Large telescopes of the future, as well as the new generation of Cherenkov telescopes, designed to study the Universe in very high energy gamma rays.
The site currently hosts the largest optical-infrared telescope in the world, along with twenty other telescopes and instruments for various kinds of studies, including nocturnal observations, robotic observing, solar physics, and high energy astrophysics.
Great advances in the study of the Universe have been made with these telescopes, ranging from the detection of the most distant galaxy to confirmation of the existence of black holes and the accelerated expansion of the Universe.
Aside from its scientific activities, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias carries out numerous outreach tasks in an effort to ensure that astronomical knowledge reaches the public at large. For this purpose, at various times of the year school and group visits are arranged to its observing facilities at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos Observatory and Observatorio del Teide.
The ORM Residence has a number of facilities (diurnal and nocturnal dormitories, kitchen, dining room, reception, lounges, games, etc.) to fulfil the needs of all the scientific and technical staff link to the observatory.
December 13, 2020 – Xinglong
The Xinglong Observatory belongs to the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) and the CAS Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy. It was first surveyed in 1965 and put into use in 1968. After more than half a century of construction, now it is the largest optical astronomical observation base in Asia. The Xinglong Observatory is located at the south foot of the main peak of the Yanshan Mountain in Xinglong County, Hebei Province, with an average altitude of about 900 meters. The geographical coordinates are 117°34’38”E and 40°23’36”N.
October 15, 2016 – Gemini North
The Gemini Observatory consists of twin 8.1-meter diameter optical/infrared telescopes located on two of the best observing sites on the planet. From their locations on mountains in Hawai‘i and Chile, Gemini Observatory’s telescopes can collectively access the entire sky.
The Gemini South telescope is located at an elevation of 2,737 meters (8,980 feet) on a mountain in the Chilean Andes named Cerro Pachón. Cerro Pachón shares resources with the adjacent SOAR Telescope and the nearby telescopes of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. It is expected that the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will join Gemini on Cerro Pachón during the second half of this decade.
The Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North telescope is located on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea as part of the international community of observatories built to take advantage of the superb atmospheric conditions on this long dormant volcano which rises about 4,214 meters (13,824 feet) into the dry, stable air of the Pacific. The Gemini Observatory’s international headquarters is located in Hilo,Hawai‘i at the University of Hawaii Hilo’s University Park.
Both of the Gemini telescopes have been designed to excel in a wide variety of optical and infrared capabilities. By incorporating technologies such as laser guide star adaptive optics and multi-object spectroscopy, astronomers in the Gemini partnership explore the universe in unprecedented depth and detail.
Gemini is operated by an international partnership that includes the United States, Canada, Brazil, Korea, Argentina and Chile. Any astronomer in each participating country can apply for time on Gemini which is allocated in accordance with the amount of financial support provided by each country. The Gemini telescopes have been integrated with the latest networking technologies to allow remote operations from control rooms at the base facilities in Hilo, Hawai‘i and La Serena, Chile. With the flexibility of “Queue Scheduling” and remote participation, researchers anywhere in the Gemini partnership will be assured the best possible match between observation, instrument and observing conditions.